And his captors read that
wild glance directly, and the doctor whipped one chair away, while Mrs.
Archbold, with more tact, sat quietly down on the other. They all three
blew their whistles shrilly.
Alfred uttered an oath and rushed at the door; but heard heavy feet
running on stone passages towards the whistles, and felt he had no chance
out that way: his dilating eye fell upon the handle of the old defunct
door: he made a high leap, came down with his left foot on its knob of
brass, and, though of course he could not stand on it, contrived to
spring from it slap at the window--Mrs. Archbold screamed--he broke the
glass with his shoulder, and tore and kicked the woodwork, and squeezed
through on to a stone ledge outside, and stood there bleeding and
panting, just as half a dozen keepers burst into the room at his back. He
was more than twenty feet from the ground: to leap down was death or
mutilation: he saw the flyman driving away. He yelled to him, "Hy! hy!
stop! stop!" The flyman stopped and looked round. But soon as he saw who
it was, he just grinned: Alfred could see his hideous grin; and there was
the rattle of chairs being brought to the window, and men were mounting
softly to secure him.
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